Meeting with Patrick Dowling, family friend and WESSA environmental educator, we discuss a more perfect world and a positive way out of our current economic and environmental dysfunction...

Patrick Dowling (pictured here doing some planting) believes that a Steady State Economy is now the way to go

Ok so we get that we are stuffed - with the economy doing a double dive and the planet protesting years of misuse - so now what? If economists have been questioning the idea of perpetual growth for centuries, how have we allowed ourselves to walk headlong into this mess? Surely this is a good a sign as any that we must make changes to our system, but the real question is, how?

Patrick believes that a Steady State System could just be the answer to our current situation.

Anthea Torr, eco-entrepreneur and part of the local Freeman Movement - 'The Republic of Good Hope', has recently faced trial and a warrant for her arrest in an attempt for her critisms of the system to be heard.

Anthea Torr, owner of Enchantrix

It all began with a building.

Having lately become very interested in the Freeman Society movement , Anthea decided not to follow the compliant route of obtaining legal papers for her structure, explaining her reasons clearly in 6 letters hand delivered to the council over the duration of a year.

One Struggle – a conference on social justice, animal rights and radical environmentalism - took place in Muizenberg last Saturday (18 Feb) thanks to the South African Vegan Society.

The conference focused on the rights of animals, the environment and human beings.

Hearing about the One Struggle conference, I was immediately excited; the South African Vegan Society represent a genuine passion for true authentic societal change, and I knew this would be reflected in any event they organised.

When we arrived in the afternoon, Jodi Allemeier was busy giving her talk on veganism and food security in Cape Town: explaining how being vegan is better not only for animals, but for people and the earth too. The young lady really sounded like she knew her stuff, and displayed all the facts to back up her statements.

‘We may be making attempts to save water in our home due to turning off taps and showering instead of bathing, but when 85% of our water waste is on our plate it is important that we re-evaluate our diet. And this is not mere theory – the U.N. have been urging people to eat local and plant-based for years,' she explained, adding: 'But it is not just our diet that must change, but the production system of our diet.’

The Koeberg Alert Alliance organisation goes back as far as 1983, but was reformed by Peter Becker in 2010. A determined man, he spends much of his time sharing the important news of what nuclear means to the people of Cape Town, trying to cut through the smokescreen that is governmental brainwashing and monopoly-driven propaganda.

For Peter, it all started with a poster. Before his anti-nuclear days Mr Becker was into wind power and one day while giving a talk at a school he couldn’t help but notice the crude misinformation on one of the posters on the wall about energy. With a couple of degrees up his sleeve Peter quickly saw through the subtle manipulation tactics scrawled across that school poster, seriously downplaying the potential dangers of Nuclear Energy. He was so disgusted that he

First Book Fair
This Guy Fawkes marked the first anarchist book fair in Africa, a trend that has taken off all around the world. These events are a great opportunity for existing anarchists to come together and the common public to learn more about anarchism.

Located at Observatory’s quirky café Ganesh, the anarchist book fair on the 5th November had a revolutionary atmosphere, and you could almost feel the genius as it bred in small groups, big ideas swished around by foreigners and locals alike.

‘There were more anarchists at the book fair than we expected,’ says Stef, one of the fair's organisers. ‘I realise now how many are actually living in Cape Town. We sold loads of books and distributed tons of pamplets.’

The Occupy movement started in Cape Town some Saturdays ago. A small group of locals hoping to reinact what has been going down all around the world for the last few months - Occupy Wall Street being the most well-known – decided to hold peaceful discussions on the lawn of Gardens outside Parliament. The intention was to plan what was to be done as well as how to spread what they felt to be an important message.

In the quiet Cape Town suburb of Plumstead a listed national monument building houses a vegan/vegetarian friendly restaurant that specialises in fresh and fantastic lunch buffets.

Michelle Carelse, the owner of Organic at Heart, took us for a walk around the kitchen garden - a space that was car park only 8 months back, now a thriving veg patch - where we discuss companion planting, worm-composting and the joys of eating as fresh as the last pick.

‘I like the idea of sustainable living,’ says Michelle. ‘This garden inspires people to start their own vegetable gardens. It’s not difficult to start growing your own herbs and salads – if everybody could just grow a little bit we could be well on our way to becoming a more self-sufficient society.’

After we had attended Tony Budden's talk a couple of Tuesday's back at Bedrock Manor , we had been super amped to check out his new home in Noordhoek.

Speaking about his own experience with hemp, Tony says:

‘I fell in love with hemp when I saw my first bit of cannabis fabric. It is so strong and durable...Then we started Hemporium . The work we do helps change the perception of hemp- we chose to make clothes because they are such a tangible product. Hemporium has been a good

Abalimi Bezekhaya means "the planters of the home" in Xhosa and I had the opportunity to spend an incredible 4 hours with Rob Small yesterday morning on a tour of some of their projects and facilities in Khayelitsha.

One of the main messages I got from Rob, which resonated very strongly with me, was the need for a shift in mindset from a consumer culture to a livelihood culture. We are suckered into a consumerist existence - living from one acquisition to the other - without questioning what the point of it is. Bigger, better, more expensive. When confronted with the harsh realities of township poverty, this point is really driven home. A "livelihood culture" is more than a subsistence way of life, one where we strip off the excesses of western life in order to enjoy more creative, meaningful work.

Our day started with a small group of us meeting at The Business Place in Philippi, where the Abalimi co-ordinating office is located, and, after quick introductions by Rob, we piled into two cars and headed off to see what Abalimi is all about. En route we got an inkling...

Pax Afrika is an unruly teen who just happens to have been chosen by the spirits of the Ancestors to save the world. And boy, does it need saving. The environment is ravaged by global warming and over-industrialisation, plants are virtually extinct and animals have mutated into nasty monster beasts. If that wasn’t bad enough, the evil corporate industrialist, Maximilian Malice, controls the city, forcing people to buy stuff and pretend to be happy. It’s up to Pax to solve the mystery of his missing dad, find the mythical lost city of URBO (or Universal Repository of Bio-Organisms, a travelling DNA library) and restore the future!

For more go to www.urbo.co.za and check out Pax in action every Friday on SABC3 at 3.30pm.

What inspired you to go eco? Pollution in iKapa is seriously out of control...